All Received of His Fullness
A Sermon on John 1:16
Originally preached Oct. 20, 1963
Scripture
16And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
Sermon Description
When the Christian is forgiven by God, reconciled to him, and intimately know Him through His Word and Spirit, it is because of Jesus. If the Christian has received anything good from the Lord, it is always and only because of Jesus the Messiah. In this sermon on His fullness from John 1:16, Dr. Lloyd-Jones discusses the idea of the fullness of Christ. He also says in order to understand that we receive anything from Christ, we ought to understand how and why. From His incarnation to His ascension, Jesus is sufficient to reconcile, save, justify, and make propitiation for His people. Dr. Lloyd-Jones points out that Jesus must be man in order to fulfill the law and be the federal head. This sermon points out that Christ must be the mighty one who can bear the full weight of God’s wrath on the cross and conquer even death. Furthermore His death had to be enough to outweigh the sin of His people now and forever. Christians are able to receive the full benefits of Christ because their mighty Lord, who knew no sin, bore the wrath of God in their stead.
Sermon Breakdown
- God's dealings with men are in and through Jesus Christ.
- Salvation depends upon receiving of Christ's fullness.
- We must consider Christ's essential greatness and fullness.
- Christ's fullness becomes available to us through the incarnation.
- God gave Christ a particular work to do - to give eternal life to those God has given Him.
- God has given Christ power over all flesh to accomplish this work.
- God sent Christ to found and establish a kingdom - to rescue people from the kingdom of darkness.
- Christ will accomplish this work and then hand the perfected kingdom back to the Father.
- We must look at how Christ's fullness was exercised on our behalf in salvation.
- Christ had to be perfectly righteous and without sin to deal with us in our sinful state.
- Christ had to render perfect obedience to God's law which we broke.
- Christ had to be able to resist and defeat the devil who conquered us.
- Christ had to be able to bear the full punishment for our sins.
- Christ had to be able to conquer death, the last enemy.
- We receive Christ's fullness only after He has redeemed us through accomplishing all this.
The Book of John
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981) was a Welsh evangelical minister who preached and taught in the Reformed tradition. His principal ministry was at Westminster Chapel, in central London, from 1939-1968, where he delivered multi-year expositions on books of the bible such as Romans, Ephesians and the Gospel of John. In addition to the MLJ Trust’s collection of 1,600 of these sermons in audio format, most of these great sermon series are available in book form (including a 14 volume collection of the Romans sermons), as are other series such as "Spiritual Depression", "Studies in the Sermon on the Mount" and "Great Biblical Doctrines". He is considered by many evangelical leaders today to be an authority on biblical truth and the sufficiency of Scripture.